Those Who Do Not Learn History…

Pre-Election Treason is Nothing New to Republicans

Two of the biggest Republican scandals of the last century were actually the result of pre-election crimes, according to AlterNet.

“Watergate and Iran-Contra were, in part at least, extensions of the original crimes, which involved dirty dealings to secure the immense power of the presidency.”

“Shortly after Nixon took office in 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover informed him of the existence of the file containing national security wiretaps documenting how Nixon’s emissaries had gone behind President Lyndon Johnson’s back to convince the South Vietnamese government to boycott the Paris Peace Talks, which were close to ending the Vietnam War in fall 1968…. The evidence is now clear that Nixon created the Watergate burglars out of his panic that the Democrats might possess a file on his sabotage of Vietnam peace talks in 1968.”

Over a decade later, “At the start of the Iran-Contra investigation, Attorney General Edwin Meese had set the time parameters from 1984 to 1986, thus keeping outside of the frame the possibility of a much more serious scandal originating during Campaign 1980, i.e., whether Reagan’s campaign undermined President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American hostages in Iran and then paid off the Iranians by allowing Israel to ship weapons to Iran for the Iran-Iraq War.”

“The 52 hostages were not released until Reagan was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1981.”

Related Articles

Chicago Tribune: “The Trump administration has decided not to punish anybody for now under new sanctions retaliating for Russia’s election-meddling, the State Department said Monday, in a surprising move that fueled further questions about whether […]

“On Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel uttered a single sentence that speaks to how fundamentally President Donald Trump has reshaped — and will continue to reshape — the world, and America’s place in it,” CNN […]